Each year, an increasing number of children and pets are left in consumer vehicles without adult supervision. In some cases, a parent or caregiver may unintentionally leave a child or pet inside a vehicle. In other cases, however, a parent or caregiver may intentionally leave a child or pet inside a vehicle while the parent or caregiver runs a quick errand. Regardless of the reason why a child or pet is left inside a vehicle, such practice potentially exposes the child or pet to dangerous environmental conditions that can develop inside the vehicle. More specifically, children and/or pets left unintended inside vehicles may be exposed to extreme temperatures (e.g., high or low temperatures), which may be extremely dangerous or even fatal to the children and/or pets.
Consumer vehicles can be equipped with an emergency event reporting service (such as ONSTAR®). Such conventional services typically contact an emergency operator in response to the vehicle being involved in an accident. However, conventional emergency event reporting services lack the ability to alert a caregiver and/or emergency services in response to a child and/or pet being left inside a vehicle having unsafe environmental conditions.